May 21, 2012

Indian Butter Chicken, hold the butter

Congratulations to Stefanie Ng and Marisol Romo! These new GAW readers will be receiving a copy of Juniper Skinner's Food Allergies and Me or Sandra Beasley's Don't Kill The Birthday Girl.

More than a year ago on Facebook, Michelle T. mentioned that she was making butter chicken, a popular Indian dish, from scratch. Desire immediately struck me -- I hadn't eaten butter chicken in such a long time! If you aren't familiar with butter chicken or murgh makhani, it's a dish of tender pieces of chicken drowning in a creamy, spiced sauce. (Starting to crave this again as I type!) With yogurt, butter, ground nuts, and peanut oil being common ingredients in Indian cuisine, our family has never been able to buy safe Indian food. But butter chicken sounded so good at that moment that I just had to figure out a way to make it immediately!

There are a lot of different recipes for butter chicken out there. All of them use garam masala, a dry spice blend. (You can make it yourself with this recipe or buy it ready-made from an Indian market.) Some recipes call for marinating your protein with tandoori masala before cooking. The origins of butter chicken are not known for sure but some think that the dish was created by accident when a king's cook accidentally created a creamy sauce to go with leftover tandoori chicken.

After some online recipe sleuthing and testing, changing, and more tinkering with a couple of good contenders, I came up with a recipe to our liking that suits our need for dairy-free/nut-free eating. I always sneak sliced mushrooms and peas into the sauce to get more veggies into my little guys. Steamed potato chunks are a good addition, too!

Soy Dream Original is my first choice for cooking. It doesn't have an overpowering sweetness or vanilla taste when cooked. Unsweetened plain soy milk (not vanilla) would work fine, too.

I serve this with rice (brown rice, jasmine rice, basmati rice, whichever) and Trader Joe's naan. Unlike traditional naan or other naan in mainstream markets, Trader Joe's versions are dairy-free. They do however use eggs and wheat and, truth be told, they aren't as awesome as real naan...but for my milk-allergic and nut-allergic kids, it is good enough for us! Pita and flatbread might be good alternatives, too.

I recently started using extra firm tofu in place of chicken. I cut one package (about 14 ounces) of the tofu into chunks and gently toss it in the marinade before refrigerating. Still delicious!